About eight months ago, we made a significant change to tags. Prior to that update, the author could add up to two tags to each post, and once posted, the community could add an additional third community tag. Personal tags such as #blog.hubski were optional.
Since that update, the author could add up to two tags, where the first tag generated a personal tag, and the second tag was a suggested community tag.
Today we are rolling things back to the original functionality.
Once again, the author can add up to two tags to a post. A third tag can then be added (and changed) by the community.
To make a personal tag, simply add an @ to the end of the tag. For example, for veen, "technology@" will create the tag #technology.veen.
I'd be happy to explain our reasoning behind the reversion below.
As always, feedback is much appreciated.
I'd like to note - if you are actually using, following, and loving personal tags I would love to hear as much or as little about why and how you use them. What do you like about personal tags? Where does the personal tag and thoughts about the personal tag fit into how you use Hubski? Etc. As far as I can tell, very few people are actually using and following the personal tags - or specifically choosing to personally tag things so that people can follow their content. I've found most people like the idea of being able to have more granular control over what they see and follow... but I don't see it actually being used. I know I don't. So, if you can give us some insight into this we may be able to come up with a better solution that provides value to you and probably the larger Hubski community. Personal tags had good intentions and looks great on paper. But there is something missing or slightly off, which is why we don't see them being used consistently.
I'm definitely guilty wanting more granular control but not using it at this point. My main thought is that the granular controls would be significantly more useful if Hubski were a significantly larger community. So, for me it'd potentially be useful in the future, but not as much right now.
I follow people, not tags, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. I have a general idea of what people are going to post because I get to know them first. So if I'm following a person, I don't care if they post something via a personal tag, because I'm probably going to like what they post anyways. The only time I interact with tags is when I want to ignore them (#reddit), or I'm creating original content that people might want to ignore and I want to make it easy for them to do so: (#hubskina.eightbitsamurai, #writing.eightbitsamurai)
As a content creator I have been using the personal tag in order to make my OC clearly visible and therefore sortable or (in my dreams) followable - you know, feed the horde of fawning followers that I have - as 8bit said, it also allows people to easily hide my OC if they don't like it. I typically have used blog._refugee_ and poetry._refugee_ though once or twice I've messed it up and called my OC something else somehow. I see a great value in having those tags from the content creator side because then it's all there if someone wants to go look! However, I happen to know how many people follow poetry._refugee_, and it's like two, and I do suspect that the value I find in the personal tag (for in case! basically) is not equal to the value that Hubski users are actually getting out of it.
I never figured out how to do anything useful with personal tags. It simply wasn't intuitive for me. That said, they were useful to see who the "user-inactivated" was because you guys never scrubbed the personal tag. So - aside from schadenfreude they were fundamentally useless to me.
I like to use personal tags for #musings.mk and #myart.mk. I also try to use #music.mk in a specific manner. But I recently posted an article about Fugazi that I would have preferred to be in #music, but not #music.mk. I am following three personal tags: #technology.veen, #askhubski.lil, and #books.ButterflyEffect. It doesn't really make sense for me to follow #askhubski.lil anymore, because I follow lil anyway. I think I followed it because I was filtering #askhubski at the time. Oh, I also follow #hubskina.eightbitsamurai because it is the only sensible thing to do.
yeah, me too. but that's the only personal tag I follow. I just realized, however, that even if I don't follow a personal tag, I could become aware that there is one such as #musings.mk and then if I suddenly need to research mk's musings over the past 1437 days, they are all there for me in one spot. I'm too busy to be that obsessive, but for the obsessives among us, it could be handy.Oh, I also follow #hubskina.eightbitsamurai because it is the only sensible thing to do.
I read hubski globally because to me otherwise hubski would operate as a clique (haud continet intentum). I like that people add tags because it gives me a better understanding about what _that_ user thinks the content is about ... telling me something about themselves in the process. But I haven't used the tags for anything else here.
Sweet! I think I prefer it this way. Thanks for the update. I've mentioned this idea before, but I'll bring it up again for sake of discussion. I think manually setting personal tags should be done away with, and users should be able to follow any combination of @user/#tag/.domain that they want (including all three in one follow). This would simplify the submission process slightly (since one wouldn't have to think in terms of personal tags and whether they'd like to use one), and give more flexibility in what a user can follow. I have no idea how feasible this is with the site architecture, but I think it'd be really cool to have.
Part of that last update was an effort in that direction. I'm definitely a fan of pull-based curation; however, we didn't find much evidence that people were looking to use it. Presentation is an issue too. insomniasexx has been working on a redesign, and in it she has a follow icon, which reveals a drop down list of things that can be followed. But, even then, things get pretty complex with such a schematic. Consider if I make a post linking to space.com, tagged #space and #mars: There is also the issue that some people like to use personal tags for specific content. That is, I might want to use the tag #music.mk specifically for music that I want other people to hear, but not for articles that relate to music or the music industry. Of course, I could make #musicilike.mk. But, I think personal tags are more likely to be followed when they aren't created for every post, as they then suggest that the author is doing something with special intent.
And that doesn't include a community tag. mk
mk.space
mk.mars
mk.space.com
#space
#mars
space.com
I think the only time people will want something as specific as mk.space is when someone is compiling a list or like you said when you want to refer someone only to the posts you have about space. I also prefer we keep the interface simple and uncluttered, so maybe it would be nice to be able to
do filtering with URLs for example hubski.com/?tag=[music, space]user=[mk, caelum19,eightbitsamurai] or if you don't like my taste in music
hubski.com/?tag=[music!(caelum19), space]user=[mk, caelum19,eightbitsamurai]
or if you only like eightbitsamurai's taste in music
hubski.com/?tag=[music.eightbitsamurai, space]user=[mk, caelum19,eightbitsamurai]
You can build some URL filters, but we don't currently have an 'or' option for variables: Here are all posts tagged with #music posted by ecib and shared by myself: https://hubski.com/tag?id=music&author=ecib&shareby=mk Here are all posts tagged with #bitcoin that I replied to that have more than two shares: https://hubski.com/tag?id=bitcoin&replied=mk&over=2 This is all the #music posts that 8bit has shared:
No. :) We should probably add them to the primer page at the very least. Here's what we have: time shares over under author replied voteby shareby type
For design, I could see something like this in the upper right where the follow links are:
edit: I also completely agree with caelum19. A nice query string structure would be super nice to have, and I think it'd go well with more specific following options.
With more being one of the cool popups with:
follow @user | follow #tag1 | follow #tag2 | follow .domain | + more
Would definitely be less crowded with only one tag, but this would be mainly the same as it is now but with a "more" button. But, I will definitely concede that it would be a waste to implement if it weren't going to be used. follow...
@user#tag1
@user#tag2
@user.domain
#tag1.domain
#tag2.domain
@user#tag1.domain
@user#tag2.domain
I'm OK with either way, but I'd love to hear the explanation!